


sweet as cream

by kirargent



Category: Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Canon Universe, F/F, Flirting, Making Out, Minor Jesper/Wylan, Post-Canon, Post-Six of Crows, Stakeout, Waffles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7379170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirargent/pseuds/kirargent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Inej, sweetheart,” Nina said. “Please. We both know full well that you’re paying for this dinner with Kaz’s money and not your own.”</p><p>Inej smirked. “Which is only more impressive, my dear Nina,” she said sweetly. “When was the last time <i>you</i> talked Dirtyhands into financing your night out on the town?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	sweet as cream

**Author's Note:**

> Inej takes Nina for waffles.
> 
> Mostly an excuse to get a feel for these characters' voices! Set after the ending of Six of Crows (so, spoilers if you're not done), with some lazy explanation as to what's going on with the Dregs/the six that will be rendered Entirely False the second the next book comes out lmao. Oh well.

Kaz could say what he liked about how now wasn’t the time to pour out a celebratory toast. It wasn't time to celebrate, not when they were tens of millions of kruge lighter than they'd anticipated; not when they’d only just regained Inej from Van Eck’s hold; not when there was parem in Ketterdam destroying both Van Eck’s enemies, and the Grisha who experienced its effects—but there was plenty of cause for joy, Inej thought, if you looked in the right places.

And Inej had become excellent at finding hidden things.

A cause for joy: she was no longer, thanks to her own wits in addition to some help from the Dregs, being held captive by a twisted mercher, nothing more than live bait for Kaz Brekker.

Another cause: tonight she'd wiggled her way into a job for Kaz that compared with last night’s job, involved considerably less clinging to stone walls by her fingertips under sheets of icy rain, and considerably more soft-fabric clothing, elegant tables with elegant white cloths, platters of rich foods, and thin-stemmed glasses of a pale drink that fizzed pleasantly on Inej’s tongue.

Tonight’s job included also a partner. The classy establishment where Pekka Rollins was rubbing elbows with the less law-abiding of Ketterdam’s wealthy wasn’t the kind of place a lone ex-pleasure house girl attended without drawing attention.

Two well-dressed female friends out for a night of rich food and laughter, on the other hand, blended right into the gold-swirled wallpaper.

And if this was a job for which Inej would usually have dressed up as an innocuous waiter and spent the night passing invisibly around Rollins’ table with the rest of the waitstaff, well—it’s not as if this was a normal gig for Kaz, either. If Inej was going to be watching Rollins for him, and Kaz’s motivation was more personal than Dregs-pertinent, then she’d be dining out on his dime, wearing the finest clothes he could dig up from somewhere within the closets of the Slat, and taking Nina along for the ride, thank you very much.

She did promise Nina a plate of waffles, after all.

Across a food-strewn table from Inej, Nina glanced up from a plate heavy with lavish breakfast pastry, fork poised in deft fingers. Looking at Inej, her lips pressed into a smile, eyes glimmering with an amused secrecy. She used the pad of a thumb to clean a smudge of white sweet cream from her full mouth. Inej’s quick eyes tracked the motion intently.

Nina’s lips were painted a bright red tonight, startling and eye-catching against the white of her teeth when she grinned. Inej blamed the intensity of the color for her inability to stop watching Nina’s mouth. The rich red was distracting—her lips looked soft and dry, the red a pretty matte. Her mouth was almost as expressive as her glittering eyes, lips twitching with amusement as she and Inej cast glances at Rollins and chatted idly between themselves to pass the time.

Nina pressed her lips out in a thoughtful pout, head tipping to one side. “Do you think,” she said, slowly, ponderously, “that if I lower that snake’s pulse enough for him to feel lightheaded and make a trip away from his table to splash water on his face … that you might bump into him and lift that gold wristwatch for me?”

She pointed casually with her fork; Inej followed her indication to see a thin, wiry man with a small nose and wide jaw seated a few tables away from them, dark hair beginning to gray and creep farther back atop his scalp. His suit was dark, crisp, and obviously expensive. The mood lighting in the establishment wasn’t too dim for Inej’s eyes to easily catch a flash of gold at his left wrist.

“Nina,” she said shortly, looking back to her companion, admonishing. But Nina grinned at her, bright and amused, and Inej’s lips pulled with a smile as her stomach flipped over slowly within her abdomen.

“What,” Nina said. Her innocently batting eyelashes were impossibly long and dark. “I’m bored.” Her mouth pinched. “And it’s been a while since I’ve been paid.”

It had been for all of them—their pockets should've been heavily weighted right now, their wallets stuffed. Inej should've been learning to captain a ship and keeping a selective eye out for properly dedicated and dangerous additions to her crew. She should've been preparing to leave the city in favor of a ceiling of stars and a floor of gray-green waves, her companions the cold sea air and her hand-picked companions. She should've been wrestling with the idea of asking Nina to accompany her, a Heartrender and a partner in travel.

Inej’s heart squeezed.

“You’re bored?” she asked, skipping over Nina’s other complaint. “That feast of waffles I bought you has expended its interest already?”

Nina grinned at her, nose crinkling. She was incredibly beautiful—dark eyes, joyful smile, her teeth a white flash. “Inej, sweetheart,” she said. “Please. We both know full well that you’re paying for this dinner with Kaz’s money and not your own.”

Inej smirked. “Which is only more impressive, my dear Nina,” she said sweetly. “When was the last time _you_ talked Dirtyhands into financing your night out on the town?”

Nina blinked. Then she laughed, bright and startled. “Well!” she said. “When you put it like that …” She shook her head. “You’re quite something, Wraith.” Her dark eyes sparkled with laughter. “In that case,” she mused, “I suppose you may consider your debt to me repaid.”

Inej’s eyebrows climbed. “A life-debt repaid in waffles. That may be the best deal I’ve ever made, and I’ve been with Kaz for some time.”

Nina wielded her fork, poking it at Inej before slicing herself a wide rectangle of waffle, scraping up a generous scoop of cream, and taking the whole construction carefully into her mouth. It was an impressive feat, Inej thought, that she did so without disturbing her red lipstick by more than a stray crumb.

She smiled as she chewed, eyes closing momentarily. “It’s a special deal,” she said when she’d swallowed, opening her eyes to smile at Inej. “Friends only.”

She looked down at her plate again and narrowed her eyes. “But I’m out of cream. If these are my ‘thanks for saving my life waffles,’ you’d better get me more cream.” She licked her lips clean of waffle; Inej watched.

Nina watched her watching, and smirked. Inej held her gaze levelly. Nina’s smile widened.

“Must I steal you the cream, to keep you properly entertained,” Inej asked, pushing away her own empty plate, still holding Nina’s eyes, “or is it all right if I just flag down a waiter?”

Nina’s smile was wide and sharp. If not for the laughter dancing in her eyes, her round face alight with a conspiratorial shine that Inej knew was meant entirely for her, Inej might have considered the blade-edge of that pretty grin and been inclined to recall that Nina contained a capability for wicked destruction in the smallest flick of her elegant fingertips. 

As it was, Inej’s heart beat a harder patter against her ribs—but it was more to do with the taunt in Nina’s eyes and the vague-edged, half-imagined idea of Inej’s lips together with Nina’s mouth, sweet cream and fast breath and warm palms.

Nina’s eyes flicked down, her lashes long and her smile sweet. “Lovely Wraith,” she said, her voice a warm murmur that Inej felt like fingertips down her spine. Nina's eyes rose again; Nina Zenik had never been shy. “Watching you in action would of course be the better treat.”

Inej felt warm, heady, and the warmth of the restaurant had nothing to do with it. It was more the floating, sharply alive feeling attainable from a successful job, a pulled-off heist. Inej was bigger than the city, sleeker than the very shadows, a sense of power humming in her temples.

Having Nina's attention focused on her—Nina, Heartrender, seductress, spy—friend—was as intoxicating as that. More so.

“But,” Nina said, looking up prettily from under her lashes, “the waiter is probably quicker than a theft.” Her teeth dented her bottom lip—red, full; was her lipstick at risk of smudging? Inej couldn't help but wonder. “So … that would get us out of here faster.” Her punctuating smirk made clear that her reasons for wanting to take their leave were utterly indecent.

Inej stopped breathing for just the span of a second. She was grateful that her skin didn't easily display a flush—but that also lasted for only the span of a second, for of course Nina, powerful, gifted Nina, needn't rely on visual cues to read Inej's response to her. Inej might've better maintained her embarrassed anger had it not been tempered by—well, Nina, sitting there across from her, eyes crinkled with the laughter evident in her whole expression.

There was something _light_ about this. Happy, diaphanous.

This wasn't games and pain and the broken edges of two broken people cutting each other when they failed to align correctly, not like with Kaz. This was laughter in pretty dark eyes, easy brushes of fingers across the table, a bright red smile that made Inej feel like she'd lost her grip and was falling, but somehow she knew she wasn't in any danger at all.

Nina—her smile, her eyes—was so _much_ , that for a moment, Inej entirely forgot that they were here doing a job. Pekka Rollins away at his own table was far less real than the delighted way Nina's nose crinkled when Inej gripped a member of the waitstaff by his sleeve and said intensely, her eyes not leaving Nina, “More cream.”

“We can't leave until Rollins does,” Inej reminded Nina as well as herself. “Kaz will have my head.”

Nina's face darkened with an impressively intense scowl. “I'm going to kill Brekker.”

Inej couldn't help her smile.

The waiter returned with a slightly frightened glance at Inej and a fresh bowl of sweet cream for Nina, and both of those things lightened Nina's expression considerably.

Nina swiped up a scoop of cream with a finger, not bothering with her waffles. She smiled as she licked her finger clean. Being a kind friend, Inej decided not to roll her eyes at Nina's blatant forwardness, though she couldn't entirely stop her smile.

“I can see you laughing, Ghafa,” Nina chastised, slicing a bite of waffle with her fork and piling cream atop it. “But I don't care. Do you want to taste this cream? You'd understand.”

Inej smiled. “Thank you, Nina, but I'm all right.”

But she did have a taste, later, a sweet afterthought on Nina's tongue when they'd seen Rollins back to his home and themselves made it nearly back to the Slat.

Nina's hand brushed Inej's repeatedly as they'd walked, an offer and a taunt, an easy contact that made Inej's heart pound loudly in her own ears. Inej gripped Nina's hand, finally, when they were nearing the Slat. Nina was taller and bigger and softer than Inej, but it wasn't difficult at all to back her up against the nearest wall, not when Nina went so willingly.

Inej's hands curled into the fabric of Nina's dress. Nina's tongue parted Inej's lips, and the sweet taste of her was well worth pursuing, and Inej pressed into her harder, warm breath and warm bodies and the cool of the night air stroking her cheeks gently.

It was a whistle that broke them apart, though Inej didn't retreat more than a few inches. She closed her eyes in irritation.

Then came a voice, a familiar one, confirming that the person who'd interrupted them was who Inej had already guessed it was. “Lovely night out, ladies!” the voice called, jovial.

Inej considered reaching for one of the knives strapped beneath her skirts.

“Sure is, Jesper, sweetheart,” Nina said easily.

Inej opened her eyes, because she had to now, sure that Nina was smiling—and she was, a bright grin on a mouth with its vibrant red now smudged, courtesy of Inej. Amusement sparkled on Nina's face.

“Now go enjoy the night somewhere else, or I swear to you I will find myself some jurda parem and subject myself to it again, if only for the pleasure of sending you away with a single word.”

Jesper raised his long, slender hands in a surrender, his grin a slash of brightness against his dark skin and the dark of the late evening.

Inej wasn't a Corporalnik, and Nina's composure was such that Inej suspected she'd need to be to notice anything off about her as she joked of the drug that had nearly ruined her. Nina wasn't exactly the same as she had been—but she was managing, and she certainly hadn't lost her humor or her confidence.

Inej grasped Nina's skirts more tightly in her hands, dragged herself closer up against Nina. She was suddenly even more anxious for Jesper to leave.

“I believe,” Inej said, not moving nor looking away from Nina but speaking loudly enough for Jesper, standing just outside the Slat, to hear her easily, “that Wylan planned to spend the night at the Crow Club.”

“Aw," Jesper said. “How much d'you bet the merchling's there hoping for a glimpse of yours truly?”

“Nothing, Jesper,” Inej said, tired of this, her eyes on Nina's kiss-messied mouth. “I bet you nothing. Go to the club, if you want to gamble.”

She didn't have to look at him to imagine his grin. “When don't I want to gamble?”

It was rhetorical, of course. He departed.

“Saints," Inej breathed. “Finally.”

Nina was smiling when Inej leaned up to kiss her again.

“We should do this again sometime,” Nina said when they parted briefly. There was a wicked glitter in her eye. “Go for waffles, I mean."

Inej smiled slowly. Nina was taller, but with her palms flat against the wall behind Nina, Inej's arms formed an effective box. She felt alive, powerful, riding on the excitement of Nina's touch. “I'll try to work something out,” she promised. "I'm sure I can find another way to get Kaz to buy us dinner.”

Nina's laughter was clear and bright in the chilly, ever-noisy Ketterdam night; Inej felt the sound as much as she heard it, Nina's stomach and chest full of the amusement.

Kaz could say what he wanted about saving celebration for later. Inej had a full stomach and laughter in her ears and someone else's lipstick on her mouth, and she was going to be happy right now.

 


End file.
